“One thing makes us special,” [the bagels] all agreed. ONE THING is who we are.”
“Be happy with the ONE THING you are,” scolded Great-Plain-Grandbagel.
But the plain bagel was NOT happy.
“It’s boring being just ONE THING,” the plain bagel groaned. “I want to be EVERYTHING!”
from The Bagel Who Wanted Everything
written and illustrated by Alan Silberberg
Viking, 2025
(read on Libby, 7/26/26)
When it comes to favorite food groups, mine is bread. Oh, that’s not a food group? But there are so many kinds besides white, wheat, and rye. Pumpernickel, sour dough, and cheesy dinner rolls. We have sticky buns dripping with honey, buttery bread sticks, crunchy bread sticks, cinnamon rolls, dal, focaccia, tortillas. Even challah, hard tack, and roti. To name a few. The bread article on Wikipedia lists close to 200, all in alphabetical order. All delicious, I’m sure.
And bread is the staff of life. Since biblical times, bread has been foundational in both cultivation and gastronomy. Growing grains has been a pivotal act in biblical stories from Joesph’s position of keeper of grains in Pharaoh’s Egypt during the time of intense drought and its resulting famine to the story of Ruth and Naomi who gleaned grain in Boaz’s fields.
The traditional Jewish blessing before meals thanks God for bringing forth bread from the land. Of course, the human (and animal) labor involved in planting, harvesting, milling, and baking is all assumed, recalling the verse from Genesis, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread.”
Archeologists have found grinding stones and ovens in ancient dwelling places throughout the world from China to Europe and from Australia to Indonesia and all across the Americas.
For all its roundness and for all its twisted history with the pretzel, the story of the bagel is pretty straightforward.
Medieval monks, especially in Germany, so the legend goes, twisted the ends of dough-ropes to resemble a person at prayer, leaving three resulting “holes” to symbolize the Holy Trinity. Monks made and served these pretzels since the 600s. The word pretzel probably comes from Latin for upper arm, maybe the length of the dough rope.
In the 1300s, when antisemitism was at a feverish peak, Poland saw a mass Jewish migration, primarily from Germany.
In many countries in Europe, especially eastern Europe, but not in Poland, it was against the law for a Jewish person to own or operate a commercial establishment that baked bread. It was a short jump for Jewish bakers to untwist the pretzel, leaving a plain dough ring.
The modern bagel’s history began in Krakow, Poland. Polish bakers made obwarzanek (Polish for “boil”), a strip of dough rolled into a rope with fastened ends. Boiled first, then baked, the resulting roll was round with a hole in the middle.
Because of their roundness, bagels were a symbol of eternity. They melded into a symbol of luck, a protection against evil and so, were provided to guests at weddings, given to women in labor, and to guests at a circumcision.
Another legend moves us forward in time. A baker in Austria in the late 1600s paid homage to King Jan Sobieski of Poland who had recently returned from defeating the Turks. The baker called his creation a “beugel,” the German word for stirrup, paying heed to the King’s conquest and love of riding.
At the turn of the 20th Century, immigrants from Eastern Europe to the US brought their recipes with them. In the 1920s in the Lower East Side of New York where many Jewish people landed, it was easy to buy a bagel from a street vendor with a pushcart. Bakeries flourished next. Bagels were common, but still Jewish.
If you ask any bagel maker for their secret ingredient, their answer will be “tradition.” Recipes were passed from bubbe to bubbe through many generations, always looking for better techniques, better ingredients, better equipment, and better serving styles. But the basics stayed the same. The key difference between a bagel and a bread roll is the process. Bagels are boiled before they are baked. That’s what gives them their outer crunch and inside denseness. Their “chew.”
The bagel shop we went to when I was growing up, Bialy's Bagels, has been in the same location in University Heights since 1966. Terry Skolnick, brought his New York bakery experience with him when he moved to Cleveland and opened his shop. He passed it to his daughter and her husband, Ellen and Mark Osolin who, in turn, sold the shop in 1984 to the Gross twins, Rachel and Sarah. The girls grew up on Bialy’s Bagels, but never dreamed that they would come to own the place.
How Terry Skolnik named his store is a mystery. A bialy is not a bagel. According to allrecipes, bialys are named for Bialystock, Poland, the place where they were first created.
A bialy is round like a bagel, but that’s where the similarity stops. Bialys are not boiled before they are baked, so have a fluffy, roll-like texture. They’re made from a ball of dough, not a rope. A depression in the center is filled usually with sautéed onion, but fillings like sesame seeds or poppy seeds are common, too.
Just like people, bagels have assimilated into mainstream culture. My grandfather would hardly know what to do with a blueberry bagel. Or a cinnamon crunch or honey whole wheat. And who would bake raisins right into the dough?
These days, you don’t have to be Jewish to love a bagel!
I’m reading Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller (Philomel/Penguin Random House, 2024). When Magnolia becomes fast friends with the daughter of her mother’s friend, the girls gain confidence as they look for owners of lost socks found at Magnolia’s parents’ laundry. Miller blends the sights, sounds, smells and people of NYC, with a touch of serendipity, to encourage curiosity and wonder in her young readers. Recommended for kids in grades 3-5 and anyone who wants a quick, fun, and thoughtful read.
Be curious! (and break bread with friends)
“Be happy with the ONE THING you are,” scolded Great-Plain-Grandbagel.
But the plain bagel was NOT happy.
“It’s boring being just ONE THING,” the plain bagel groaned. “I want to be EVERYTHING!”
from The Bagel Who Wanted Everything
written and illustrated by Alan Silberberg
Viking, 2025
(read on Libby, 7/26/26)
When it comes to favorite food groups, mine is bread. Oh, that’s not a food group? But there are so many kinds besides white, wheat, and rye. Pumpernickel, sour dough, and cheesy dinner rolls. We have sticky buns dripping with honey, buttery bread sticks, crunchy bread sticks, cinnamon rolls, dal, focaccia, tortillas. Even challah, hard tack, and roti. To name a few. The bread article on Wikipedia lists close to 200, all in alphabetical order. All delicious, I’m sure.
And bread is the staff of life. Since biblical times, bread has been foundational in both cultivation and gastronomy. Growing grains has been a pivotal act in biblical stories from Joesph’s position of keeper of grains in Pharaoh’s Egypt during the time of intense drought and its resulting famine to the story of Ruth and Naomi who gleaned grain in Boaz’s fields.
The traditional Jewish blessing before meals thanks God for bringing forth bread from the land. Of course, the human (and animal) labor involved in planting, harvesting, milling, and baking is all assumed, recalling the verse from Genesis, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread.”
Archeologists have found grinding stones and ovens in ancient dwelling places throughout the world from China to Europe and from Australia to Indonesia and all across the Americas.
For all its roundness and for all its twisted history with the pretzel, the story of the bagel is pretty straightforward.
Medieval monks, especially in Germany, so the legend goes, twisted the ends of dough-ropes to resemble a person at prayer, leaving three resulting “holes” to symbolize the Holy Trinity. Monks made and served these pretzels since the 600s. The word pretzel probably comes from Latin for upper arm, maybe the length of the dough rope.
In the 1300s, when antisemitism was at a feverish peak, Poland saw a mass Jewish migration, primarily from Germany.
In many countries in Europe, especially eastern Europe, but not in Poland, it was against the law for a Jewish person to own or operate a commercial establishment that baked bread. It was a short jump for Jewish bakers to untwist the pretzel, leaving a plain dough ring.
The modern bagel’s history began in Krakow, Poland. Polish bakers made obwarzanek (Polish for “boil”), a strip of dough rolled into a rope with fastened ends. Boiled first, then baked, the resulting roll was round with a hole in the middle.
Because of their roundness, bagels were a symbol of eternity. They melded into a symbol of luck, a protection against evil and so, were provided to guests at weddings, given to women in labor, and to guests at a circumcision.
Another legend moves us forward in time. A baker in Austria in the late 1600s paid homage to King Jan Sobieski of Poland who had recently returned from defeating the Turks. The baker called his creation a “beugel,” the German word for stirrup, paying heed to the King’s conquest and love of riding.
At the turn of the 20th Century, immigrants from Eastern Europe to the US brought their recipes with them. In the 1920s in the Lower East Side of New York where many Jewish people landed, it was easy to buy a bagel from a street vendor with a pushcart. Bakeries flourished next. Bagels were common, but still Jewish.
If you ask any bagel maker for their secret ingredient, their answer will be “tradition.” Recipes were passed from bubbe to bubbe through many generations, always looking for better techniques, better ingredients, better equipment, and better serving styles. But the basics stayed the same. The key difference between a bagel and a bread roll is the process. Bagels are boiled before they are baked. That’s what gives them their outer crunch and inside denseness. Their “chew.”
The bagel shop we went to when I was growing up, Bialy's Bagels, has been in the same location in University Heights since 1966. Terry Skolnick, brought his New York bakery experience with him when he moved to Cleveland and opened his shop. He passed it to his daughter and her husband, Ellen and Mark Osolin who, in turn, sold the shop in 1984 to the Gross twins, Rachel and Sarah. The girls grew up on Bialy’s Bagels, but never dreamed that they would come to own the place.
How Terry Skolnik named his store is a mystery. A bialy is not a bagel. According to allrecipes, bialys are named for Bialystock, Poland, the place where they were first created.
A bialy is round like a bagel, but that’s where the similarity stops. Bialys are not boiled before they are baked, so have a fluffy, roll-like texture. They’re made from a ball of dough, not a rope. A depression in the center is filled usually with sautéed onion, but fillings like sesame seeds or poppy seeds are common, too.
Just like people, bagels have assimilated into mainstream culture. My grandfather would hardly know what to do with a blueberry bagel. Or a cinnamon crunch or honey whole wheat. And who would bake raisins right into the dough?
These days, you don’t have to be Jewish to love a bagel!
I’m reading Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller (Philomel/Penguin Random House, 2024). When Magnolia becomes fast friends with the daughter of her mother’s friend, the girls gain confidence as they look for owners of lost socks found at Magnolia’s parents’ laundry. Miller blends the sights, sounds, smells and people of NYC, with a touch of serendipity, to encourage curiosity and wonder in her young readers. Recommended for kids in grades 3-5 and anyone who wants a quick, fun, and thoughtful read.
Be curious! (and break bread with friends)
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